LBRP

Been a while since I posted, I guess. I've been regularly doing the Relaxation Ritual, followed by the LBRP ever since I've learned doing it. At first I was doing it twice each day, but nowadays I only do it before going to bed. Whether it's the ritual itself or something else, I cannot be certain, however my life's a lot better now, that's for sure. Hardly seems like a coincidence, though.

According to MM, the next step is the Middle Pillar ritual (I've skipped the Four Adorations), but I want to focus a bit more on meditation before I start that. I still haven't done much Tarot related stuff either, so this and the Middle Pillar are next, possibly in about a week's time. It seems that the ritual is to be followed by the LBRP, therefore I will combine the two. Now I can see how the banishing ritual is considered simple, it's all gradually getting more and more involved, with plenty of theory to browse through. I guess it's slowly time to check out Regardie's books.

Success!

My first LBRP went very smoothly. I haven't felt anything out of the ordinary up until my last Kabbalistic Cross, it was a faint but very perceptible feeling of being a giant, as if I was towering above the world - a bit bizarre and unusual, but in a good way.

I started with the Relaxation Ritual (standing up, in the middle of the following circle) and continued straight with the LBRP. Skipped the Tarot Contemplation Ritual for now, it's late and I'm quite tired now, but I've noted the results in the diary, just to make sure it turns into a habit.

Early rituals

Following the advice from MM, I've learned the Relaxation ritual (this one looks like a copy/paste from Kraig's book) and the Tarot Contemplation ritual (once again). I'm doing them each night, about an hour before going to bed. I'm supposed to write down my results in the diary, but honestly, I don't really feel/think anything when staring at the cards - I haven't read about the meanings of each card yet, that's for later. Once I get more used to it, things will surely become clearer.

As a friend of mine explained, a very important thing to learn at the very beginning is proper meditation. Something tells me learning it is one thing, but where the real power lies is actually doing it each day. This page has plenty of information about various forms of meditation, for both beginners and advanced people; I should probably make a list of interesting links and add them to the blog. I keep thinking that this is one of the most important aspects of not only magick, but everything even remotely spiritual-related in life - although regardless of how simple it is, meditating doesn't seem easy at all.

Another important issue is the LBRP - this is the first somewhat complex (with a beginner's eye, mind you) ritual that's tackled in MM, and also the most important, it seems. As someone said, those who dismiss it merely for its banishing properties are unworthy of performing it, it's so much more than that. Now my problem is that, scouting teh internets, I managed to find Frater Osiris' modified version, suitably titled the New Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram. However I look at it, he does seem to have quite a few good points and while this one differs a bit from the one found in MM, I promised myself from the very start that I would not blindly follow one person's teachings, but instead research other methods, opinions and advice. In fact, this is something recommended by Kraig himself; so with all this said, I decided to go with this version, but quickly afterwards, I stumbled upon an even more refined variation, this time by a certain Frater Orthus 936. Well, one thing lead to another, and this is the one I'm going to stick with - yes, I'm well aware that there are a trillion versions out there, later on I will want to try the one from The Bible of the Adversary. This modified Golden Dawn version however, is very good to start out with, regardless of path.

In order to make learning it easier, I've written down a condensed version of the ritual, which goes like this:

1. Face E → Forehead → EHEIEH
2. Groin → MALKUTH
3. Right shoulder → VE GEBURAH
4. Left shoulder → VE GEDULAH
5. Osiris risen → LE-OLAH
6. Osiris slain → IAO
7. E → Air Pent. → Enterer → EHEIEH → Silence
8. N → Earth Pent. → Enterer → ADONAI → Silence
9. W → Water Pent. → Enterer → EHLOAH → Silence
10. S → Fire Pent. → Enterer → AGLA → Silence
11. Face E → Osiris slain → Before me, RAPHAEL [yellow, wand, wind]
12. Behind me, GABRIEL [blue, cup, waterfalls]
13. On my right hand, MICHAEL [red, flaming sword, warmth]
14. And on my left, URIEL [green, wheat, fertile landscape]
15. For about me flame the pentagrams and within me shines the six-rayed star!
16. Forehead → EHEIEH
17. Groin → MALKUTH
18. Right shoulder → VE GEBURAH
19. Left shoulder → VE GEDULAH
20. Osiris risen → LE-OLAM
21. Osiris slain → IAO

It's easy to follow if you're somewhat familiar with the ritual. If you desire to learn it as well, I recommend you to write your own list instead of simply copying mine, it should be a lot more effective. I don't really like writing things phonetically, so first I had to learn how to pronounce the words, which is not an issue, MM helps with that. I suspect the pronounciations aren't that important as long as you know what you mean. As you can probably see, the ritual itself is made of four major parts (actually five, the last part being identical to the first):

1. (1-6) - The Kabbalistic Cross
2. (7-10) - The construction of the Circle
3. (11-14) - The invocation of the Archangels
4. (15) - The affirmation of the Circle
5. (16-21) - The Kabbalistic Cross

With all this written down, learning the ritual should be easy and fast. I intend to do this at least once every day, perhaps eventually end up doing the LIRP in the morning and the LBRP in the evening. I found two helpful videos, things are a lot easier when we can see them:

• This one is very well done, but it's missing the Sign of the Enterer
• And this one, which does have the sign

There are infinite ways to start out (plenty of forum posts over at various communities), I suggest to do your research and stick to what you feel most comfortable with. Eventually you'll be modifying things to suit your needs and tastes and you might end up with something completely different, but, most importantly, a paradigm you're 100% comfortable with.

What is the meaning of this?

Right. Well, hello! I am a nondescript person who lives in a nondescript place and this here is a blog where I will (occasionally, but hopefully often enough) write posts about learning magick. The main purpose is to keep me motivated - for some reason or other I have the feeling that keeping a (relatively) regular blog will be helpful in that regard. I kinda hope it will also be useful for someone who`s starting out or at least thinking of starting magick. I'm spending at least an hour each day on learning magickal arts (between 11 and 12 PM), sometimes more -maybe not that much, but infinitely more than nothing. I've been meaning to get started since 5 years now, but I've been putting it off for various reasons.

I'm armed with a rather large collection of occult books, gathered from various places; if you look hard enough, you'll find plenty of them, the internet is pretty useful for such things. I guess many of the files I have are probably shit, but with zero magickal experience I really can't be the judge of that just yet.

My journey starts with Donald Michael Kraig's "Modern Magick: Eleven Lessons in the High Magickal Arts" (I will refer to it as MM from now on), probably one of the most well known books for beginners. I have also acquired a deck of tarot cards (Vargo's Gothic Tarot - the name might discourage some people, but that's probably because they didn't even bother to check it out) as per the instructions found in MM. Another thing is keeping a magickal diary and since that is something repeatedly emphasized by many, many people, I told myself I wouldn't neglect it. I'm guessing I won't really have much to discuss there at the start, but eventually it should get easier to fill it.

As for my future plans, well, they're not set in stone right now and they might change, for all I know. Choosing a path is very difficult, however, from what I gathered so far, what I'm most interested in is Michael Ford's writings and ideas, so Luciferianism is most likely the path I'm going to take. As I mentioned, this might change since I'm merely at the very start of this long road, but it's something I've been reading about since years now and I like what I read. I've also thought of joining the Church of Adversarial Light, I'll make a decision on this later this year.

I'm keeping this whole thing a secret from (maybe almost) everyone I know, for obvious reasons. It's better this way, at least for now - if I share the link, it's only with the very few people I trust, who probably won't look at me like I belonged to an asylum (I probably do, though). The site will mostly contain magickal musings, but also other niche stuff I experiment around with, like lucid dreaming, OBEs, psychedelics and the like.

That's about it, for now, next time I'll be writing about the first rituals from Modern Magick.